


A Nightmare

by The_Uninspired



Category: Naruto
Genre: Abstract, Dreams, Gen, Horror, Itachi Screwed His Brother Up Real Good, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Psychological Horror, Surreal, Trauma, Trippy, Uchiha Massacre, get this boy some THERAPY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 16:57:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17901971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Uninspired/pseuds/The_Uninspired
Summary: Most nights he dreams. Sincethat night, most of his dreams are nightmares.





	A Nightmare

“Sasuke, dear, would you get that for me? My hands are full.”

Sasuke looks up from his rice. He hadn’t even noticed the knocking before, but now it’s pounding through the whole house, shaking through the floors and up into his toes.

“Quickly Sasuke.” His mother says, not scolding yet but with a tension in her voice that threatens it.

Sasuke pushes back from the table and gets up. Each step towards the front door is harder than the last- the knocking hasn’t stopped yet and the quaking gets worse as he gets closer to the door. When he finally reaches it he has to hold onto the knob to keep from falling over.

“Please stop knocking!” He cries. “If you stop I can let you in!”

And thankfully, it stops.

Sasuke’s sweaty palm slips on the doorknob and he has to use both hands to get it to twist all the way around. He pulls back with all his weight and the door flies open. Blinking against the pitch dark starless night, Sasuke looks at the front step. No one is there.

“Hello?” He asks. He steps out onto the porch and nearly jumps. To the right, out of sight before, is standing his brother. Itachi is wearing his ANBU uniform, complete with his porcelain mask, but something’s wrong with it. The bracers are cracked and smeared red. Long strands of black hair are caught in the straps of his dented shin-guards. His armored chest is soaked and dripping with a combination of pale red and something far darker than that.

“Itachi, are you okay?” Sasuke asks, trying to find his brother’s eyes behind the slit gaps in his animal mask. It’s like the void behind them though, just black. Sasuke twitches and swallows down an itching sense of dread. “Big brother?”

And then Itachi stabs him.

It takes barely a moment. Itachi raises his hand, gripping a rusted short sword. Those black pits turn towards Sasuke. His brother shifts minutely in preparation. And then, without a sound, Itachi lunges forward and thrusts the tip of the blade through Sasuke’s stomach.

An unbearably heavy numbness floods Sasuke’s body and he falls to the floor. Blood is getting everywhere- his blood. It’s pumping and pumping out, a gushing stream that isn’t slowing down. Sasuke can feel his inner linings sloughing off and spilling out.

Even without the blood to pump, his heart is racing fit to burst from his chest. Itachi stands over him, completely still.

‘Why did you do that?’ Sasuke tries to cry, but no sound escapes his dry throat. Itachi shows no sign of even noticing him. Slowly his brother turns. He steps over Sasuke’s body and then, leaving bloody footprints, steps into the house.

‘What are you doing?!’ Sasuke screams without sound. He finds the strength to turn himself around until he can see back into the house. Itachi slows down when he reaches the table and turns to face their mother. She stands up and smiles, opens her arms wide. Itachi shifts back, adjusts the grip on his sword, and drives it into her throat.

‘Mom! Mom!!’ Tears fill his eyes as Sasuke watches his mother falter, stumble, then collapse to her knees. She’s smiling up at Itachi as if his weapon isn’t still stuck in her neck, as if blood isn’t spraying down her front and across the floor and up into her face.

Itachi leaves his sword in her throat and walks back towards Sasuke.

Sasuke tries to back away but his body is heavy and dead under him, and his hands are clumsy and shaking. He can do little but lean back and scrabble at the ground. And when Itachi reaches him and grabs his head with both hands, Sasuke can do little but beat weakly at his brother’s iron grip.

‘Itachi, big brother, please-’ Sasuke begs until he can’t anymore. Itachi slams his head against the ground once, twice, again, again, again. Sasuke can feel his skull shatter and his brains oozing down the back of his neck. Again, again, again, again, until nothing is left.

There is nothing, and then there is a pounding at the front door so loud he can feel it in his feet.

“Sasuke, dear, would you get that for me? My hands are full.” His mother asks.

Sasuke grips the table and gasps for breath. His heart is burning in his chest.

“Quickly Sasuke.” His mother says.

Sasuke stands up slowly and walks to the door even slower. The vibrations carry up his feet, through his legs, up along his spine. His fingers are shaking when he tries to open the front door. They’re too sweaty, and it takes both hands to turn the knob all the way. Sasuke isn’t sure why the idea of opening the front door is so terrifying- they’re not expecting anyone unsavory. Both father and brother are due home today. This is good news, but Sasuke can’t shake the sense of fear as he pulls the door open.

“Hello?” He can’t see anyone. He takes a step out onto the porch and looks around. At the sight of the hiding figure Sasuke yelps and jumps back. Then he looks closer and sees who it is- it’s Itachi. It should be a good thing to see him, Sasuke’s been missing him for so long, but instead it’s as if the earth beneath him falls away. Sasuke struggles to stay upright as his knees shake and buckle. There’s blood on his brother’s armor, blood on his mask, blood on his sword. Sasuke wraps his arms around his stomach and stumbles back. “Big brother, please don’t-”

Itachi stabs him.

The blade goes through his right hand and on through his stomach. It’s the same place as last time. It’s the same place Itachi stabbed him last time. Oh gods, oh spirits, he can remember-

Sasuke collapses as his body turns to lead. Only his left hand is free, and he grabs at his brother’s ankle as he steps over him. His weak fingers can barely hold a grip. Itachi doesn’t even look down as he pulls away. He’s walking towards their mother now, who’s smiling at him fondly.

Itachi tears through her throat and she falls to her knees at his feet, smile still on her lips, even as her own blood coats them. She reaches out to embrace her son but Itachi pulls away. He’s coming back towards Sasuke, flexing his hands.

Sasuke is struck as if by lighting with the knowledge of what is about to be done- of what has already been done. He uses his good hand to grab at the wood flooring, fingers digging into splinters and slipping in his own blood. He’s panting and straining and nothing is working and he knows what’s coming, he knows what’s coming-

Itachi’s fingers dig into his skull like knifes as he brings Sasuke’s head down against the solid ground again, again, again. Sasuke is sobbing and screaming and he doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve this.

He’s still gasping and crying when the pounding starts up again.

“Sasuke, dear,” His mother says pleasantly, “Would you get that for me? My hands are full.”

Sasuke shoves his chair back and stumbles to his feet. He runs shaking hands across his stomach, feeling the soft unbroken skin. Then he digs his fingers under his hair, pressing against his skull. The bone seems so solid, so cold, but he knows what it feels like when it cracks and bleeds and burns-

“Quickly Sasuke.” His mother says. She’s smiling at him still, her eyes far away like she’s in a different house than he is, serving breakfast to a different son.

Sasuke grabs a knife from the table and runs to the door. He stops with his hands on the doorknob and takes a breath to calm himself. The fear buzzes steady just behind his eyes, and he flinches and jumps with each pounding knock on the door. He steadies his grip on the knife in his fist. Then he pulls the door open, arm raised and knife ready and-

Itachi is right in front of him on the doorstep, sword already raised. Sasuke shrieks and stumbles back, bumping into the wall. Itachi is in front of him with only a few steps, towering over him and staring down with those empty black holes behind his ANBU mask.

“I won’t let you!” Sasuke screams and brings his knife down towards his brother’s chest.

With nothing but a flick of his wrist Itachi sends the knife flying. It hits the floor just out of reach. Sasuke ducks low and darts away towards the knife, but his brother’s fingers wrap around his wrist like iron. Sasuke struggles and screams and pulls against Itachi’s grip, but his brother is like a statue and he doesn’t move even an inch. The panic is building with each second, higher and higher in pitch until it’s every single thought in his head, every single twitch of his nerves, every single drop of blood in his veins. Sasuke screams and screams, but his mother doesn’t seem to even hear him, and Itachi doesn’t seem to care.

Itachi leans down and drives his sword into Sasuke’s stomach.

Sasuke chokes and gags as blood begins to drown him from the inside. He strikes out with both arms but Itachi is already moving away. With unsteady blurring vision Sasuke watches as Itachi approaches their mother. She’s smiling at him with that same far-away look in her eyes. Sasuke thrashes and screams and can do nothing as his older brother runs his sword through their mother’s neck. His mother wavers and collapses to her knees. Itachi leaves the sword hanging from her gaping, bleeding throat and turns back around.

His sobbing and cursing and senseless begging do nothing. Sasuke shrieks and pleads as Itachi comes back to him, but his brother doesn’t even flinch. It’s as if he’s possessed, as if he’s some kind of demon, as if he’s not a person at all. Itachi is utterly mechanical as he drops to his knees in front of Sasuke and reaches out with both hands. Sasuke flails weakly, fighting with every drop of the little strength he has left. He throws his fists at his brother but Itachi knocks them aside with ease. When his brother grabs for his head Sasuke thrashes and struggles to get away, but it’s no use. Itachi’s iron grip finds him and traps him. Sasuke stares death in his empty eyes and whimpers as the hands tighten on his skull.

The back of his head hits the wall again and again and again. First the skin breaks, then the bone cracks, then the bone begins to shatter. And then his brain begins to bruise and collapse and break apart. Sobbing, retching, Sasuke curses at his brother as he kills him again and again and again.

“Sasuke, dear, would you get that for me? My hands are full.”

His body is numb. His head is pounding. Sasuke wants to die and never come back.

“Quickly Sasuke.”

Sasuke forces himself to shaking feet. He scans the room. There are no other doors, no other ways to escape. There is the dining table, the four chairs set around it, and his mother, hovering over with food in her arms.

“Quickly Sasuke.” She says again, and he jumps. Her face is as pleasant as ever, but the words cut like a blade to white bone, like it wasn’t she who had even said them.

Heart thumping so fast he’s certain it will kill him, Sasuke stumbles to the front door. He paws at the doorknob with sweaty fingers.

When it swings open, he doesn’t call out. He doesn’t step forward or look around for his brother. Sasuke’s knees give out and he collapses. He draws his shivering hands to his chest, hugs himself in a desperate attempt for some kind of comfort, and falls forward until his forehead hits the door frame.

Quiet footsteps come closer and then step over him. Sasuke squeezes his eyes shut and rocks back and forth and finds himself praying that his older brother will kills his mother instead of him. It’s the worst thought he’s ever had in his life, and Sasuke realizes with utter terror that maybe he deserves to die.

The sword plunges into his stomach from behind, striking him suddenly with a blurry and nauseating weakness. His body is heavy and cold and aching as he listens to his brother walk away. Then there is a crash as their mother falls to her knees, bleeding from the fatal wound her eldest son gave her. And then there’s the sound of footsteps coming closer again.

Sasuke flinches when his brother’s hands grip his skull, but he doesn’t fight it. He closes his eyes and tells himself that it’ll be over soon. He tries to push down the fear and the panic and the pain and he tells himself again and again, it’ll be over soon, it’ll be over soon, it’ll be over soon. But it’s a lie. It’s a lie and he can barely breathe. How many times will Itachi kill him? How many times? He can’t deserve it this many times, can he? What’s he doing wrong? Why isn’t it stopping? Why won’t it stop?

He tries not to scream or cry as Itachi begins to beat him to death, slamming his face into the floor again and again and again, but it’s impossible. He sobs and begs until he can’t anymore and he really, really wants to die.

*******

Sasuke rips himself from the sweaty snarl of blankets and careens out of bed. His knees buckle and hit the hardwood as he retches up bile, throat burning. Tears sting his eyes and he can feel a scream trapped in his lungs, aching as he fights to catch his breath.

With shaking hands he snatches a pouch of kunai and straps on his sandals. He stumbles to the window and climbs out into the yard. The moon is full overhead, casting an otherworldly glow.

Sasuke trains until it’s gone from view and the sun has risen in its place.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in the middle of the night, exhausted, to keep myself from falling back to sleep after a nightmare.
> 
> Every year or so I get these particularly terrifying nightmares. I’m not sure what brings them on, and they're never the same dream twice. The only constant is how they play out in a kind of dreadful, terrible loop. As it drags on I become more and more aware that I'm trapped in a nightmare, but I can't stop the repeating horrifying events no matter how hard I try. The worst one I’ve ever had involved several instances of waking up in my bedroom, certain I’d finally escaped, only to get out of bed and be killed. When I finally did wake up for real I just sobbed, terrified that I wasn't really awake.
> 
> So I guess this fic is therapy in a way. Releasing my own demons via Sasuke's. Sorry Sasuke. Blame Itachi, not me.


End file.
